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The New Face of Immigration: Flor de Manila y San Francisco by Jenifer K. Wofford

Catherine Ceniza Choy

It’s easy to notice, then overlook the Filipino immigrant nurse. Her ubiquity in U.S. hospitals lends to stereotyping: natural caregiver, docile worker, foreign labor competition. By providing a contemplative and multifaceted backstory to Filipino nurse Flor Villanueva, artist Jenifer K. Wofford compels us to a take a second, and more thoughtful, look.

Her kiosk poster project Flor de Manila y San Francisco importantly makes visible the complexity of the phenomenon of the international migration of Filipino nurses. In the early 1970s, the Philippine government adopted an export-oriented economy that featured the export of laborers. By the end of that decade, the Philippines became the world’s leading exporter of nurses, sending nurses to European as well as North American countries.

Historically, however, the leading destination for Filipino nurse migrants has been the United States. The early-twentieth-century U.S. colonization of the Philippines created a unique and enduring relationship between the two countries. The U.S. colonial government established hospital training schools that encouraged young Filipinas to study an Americanized professional nursing curriculum, which included the study of the English language.

Mass migrations of Filipino nurses to the United States began in the second half of the twentieth century when U.S. hospitals began to actively recruit Filipino nurses to alleviate critical nursing shortages, especially in public inner-city hospitals of major urban areas. In 1965, watershed U.S. immigration legislation facilitated the permanent residence of Filipino nurses by favoring the immigration of professionals with needed skills. At least twenty-five thousand Filipino nurses immigrated to the United States between 1966 and 1985. Like Flor Villanueva, many went to the state of California, one of the major states that employs foreign-trained nurses. The predominantly female and highly educated demographics of this contemporary flow of immigration sharply contrasted with the predominantly Filipino male, working class immigration to the United States before 1965. Thus, Wofford’s beautifully nuanced representation of Flor’s personal transformation in San Francisco—from newly-arrived immigrant dwarfed by the city’s high rises to the diligent professional worker in a city hospital to a passionate activist protesting the eviction of elderly Filipino men from the I-Hotel—also illustrates the dynamic landscape of U.S. immigration.

Equally important in this poster project, however, are the settings in Manila. The poster set in 1973 juxtaposes Flor’s arrival in San Francisco with the Philippine landscape, family, and friends she has left behind. The captions illuminate multiple and often painful motivations for emigration. For the Filipino nurse and her relatives in the early 1970s, the white nurse’s cap symbolically and literally became a passport to a more prosperous life for the immigrant and the family that she left behind. A relative of Flor puts it this way: “It is your ticket out of here.” Yet, emigration during this time period is also motivated by political instability, specifically the disappearances of political opponents to the Marcos regime that placed dissidents of Philippine martial law, like Flor’s brother, at risk.

For the immigrant, departure, arrival, and return are complicated matters. Wofford’s drawings offer a unique lens to view both experiences of socio-economic mobility as well as the social cost of overseas migration. We learn that at particular moments “work [in San Francisco] is wonderful.” Flor admires the modern hospital buildings, enjoys socializing with other Filipino nurse immigrants, and derives deep satisfaction from her bedside work with patients. Yet, the posters also poignantly remind the viewer that these nurses are not solely workers; they are also members of families and communities across the Pacific Ocean. Captions explain that Flor did not want to leave Manila and that she felt faint on the plane ride. Americanized nursing training did not prepare her for the cold and foggy weather of the Bay Area. Although she was able to return to the Philippines for a visit, some of her relations were strained after a two-year separation. Wofford also skillfully illustrates a myriad of facial expressions that suggest Flor’s ambivalence about her arrival in San Francisco and about work in the United States. Flor’s look of awe and intimidation at the San Francisco high rises is perhaps accompanied by a longing to fly back to the Philippines. Her downcast eyes as she carries a tray of food and medicine belie the drudgery of her labor even in a modern American hospital.

Finally, one of the striking and highly original features of Flor de Manila y San Francisco is its meditation on the profound and mundane transnational dimensions of everyday life. The accessibility of airplane travel enabled her emigration to the United States and a return visit to the Philippines, as it continues to do so for the tens of thousands of Filipino nurse migrants working in countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East as well as the United States in the twenty-first century. Flor’s distribution of gifts and money to Filipino friends and relatives depicts the circulation of commodities across national borders, a phenomenon that persists to the present day and that forms the largest source of foreign currency for a debt-stricken Philippines.

Flor de Manila y San Francisco places a human face on Filipina immigrant nurses and constructs an alternative narrative to the immigration studies that too often represent them as commodified units of labor. Instead, viewers are able to see Flor as a daughter and sibling, professional caregiver and colleague, emigrant and immigrant. Wofford’s drawings and captions embue the Filipina migrant nurse experience with complexity and dignity, making Flor’s story of loneliness and adaptation across two cities, nations, and continents wonderfully unique and universal at the same time.